FINDINGS III By Harry T. Cook

 

 

Proper 7 - B - June 24, 2012      

 

Mark 4: 35-41    

   

  

  

Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
6/18/12 

 
In the passage at hand, the disciples are depicted first as terror-stricken by "a great windstorm" on the Sea (inland lake, really) of Galilee, and finally as "filled with great awe" that Jesus seemed to have shut down the storm with three words of one syllable each: "Peace! Be still!" Those who over time have done more about sailing than putter in a dock race will likely know about such terror.

I experienced it myself once as part of a crew aboard a 22-foot E-scow in the middle of a lake that is 18 miles long, three miles wide and in some places nearly 300 feet deep. A squall line crossed our course bringing with it winds close to 40 knots. That's when the stomach turns to jelly and primal fear exudes from every pore.

On that occasion there was at the tiller a seasoned sailor who'd seen it all and knew how not to be caught broached to the wind. Outwardly unperturbed, he kept her bow tight into the wind, tacking only slightly to and fro until we reached leeward shelter not much the worse for wear.
 
Our skipper had spoken to neither wind nor water. In fact, he spoke to us -- and sharply -- telling us to cut out our nervous chatter and sit still to windward. He later said he might not have been able to bring the boat in safely without our minimal help.

I can tell you all these years along that the skipper's crew that day was "filled with great awe" at his mastery of craft, weather and water. He didn't make the storm go away, but he brought us to shore unharmed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is a clue in v. 35 that presages the storm. It is said that Jesus wanted to "go to the other side." Awaiting him on the other side (see Mark 5: 1-2, the passage immediately following the one under consideration here) is the Gerasene demoniac representing for Mark disorder and chaos. The storm was chaos of its own, and Mark depicts Jesus making the wind behave in an orderly fashion -- orderly, that is, for those who wished to use it as an engine of transportation. Yet why should not the wind be itself and blow at gale force?

In any event, Mark arranges for Jesus to remain on "the other side" long enough to deal with the demoniac's disorder, but only by transferring the agency of the poor man's personal chaos into a herd of swine, a catastrophe for the swineherds who would now have to explain to their employers, the owners of the swine, how it was that they had run headlong, lemming-like, over a cliff and into the sea and drowned. So much for hog futures. Jesus, Mark says, returned or was returned to the side from which he had come, no longer, apparently, being welcome there.

Several thoughts:

1) "The sea or great deep" in antiquity represented the place of death. It was over a deep great and its writhing that the Priestly writer of Genesis imagined the gods (elohim) brooding and from it wresting life. Did Mark see (and make) that connection with this story?

2) It is highly doubtful that any of the authors of the canonical gospels ever knew the person or persons behind the figure "Jesus of Nazareth." Thus do the depictions of their individual versions of that figure derive in some part from the versions of the stories each used to bolster whatever was the desired theological or ecclesiological agenda.

3)  "The other side" may in part represent for Mark what he figured Jesus must have faced in his public career: a plethora of dead traditions the maintenance of which was often burdensome to the poor and disadvantaged (see, e.g., 2: 27-28.) Even on his own "side" of the sea, he has already had to face down the Jewish establishment (in the form of a demoniac) in the Capernaum synagogue (1:21-28). "On the other side," both figuratively and literally, he is to encounter criticism, detraction and finally death -- the final act of the same chaos seen in the storm at sea and in the twisted countenance of "Legion."

4) It is that same chaos Mark at 16:1-8 will depict welling up in the women at Jesus' burial place, making them afraid and unable to tell anyone what they have seen and what they have not. No Pollyanna, Mark. It seems he sensed that chaos was never far away. History had already proven him right. It keeps doing so over and over again.

5) The reading from Job connected to the gospel passage by the lectionary editors offers another take on the "wind and water" motif, suggesting that Yahweh can speak and has spoken out of a whirlwind to insist that He is master of all the attendant phenomena and has "set bars and doors" against their trespass upon the unwitting. The lectionary editors must have decided that Mark's Jesus in the boat nearly awash and on the verge of capsizing spoke with the same authority as Job's Yahweh. Personally, I appreciated the skill and determination of the skipper who was at the tiller of the E-scow T-18 (I think it was) that day.

6) A minor note: Job 38:1 (NSRV) includes words that should be inscribed somewhere in every preacher's study, graven on every pulpit and drilled into every clerical head: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"

Let us for purposes of this discussion stipulate that something like the event described in the Markan passage under consideration here may have occurred. It would not have been unusual for those who were said to have begun their lives as fisherman to have access to a boat for use on that inland sea, roughly 16 miles in length and eight miles at the widest. Let us say that the author of Mark was himself or knew those who were familiar with the maritime enterprise.

Let us further suppose that, at one time or another, a group of persons more or less united in their fealty to the liberal version of Judaism that Mark advanced in his gospel were together on a boat and were caught in a storm. Let us say that by one means or another they weathered it without disaster or injury.  

We might imagine such a group of individuals, once ashore, rejoicing that that they had not perished but, once the storm had passed, could resume their journey. They may have compared the struggle, from which they were still wringing out their wet garments, to their against-all-odds mission of passing on and living out the liberal version of Judaism the revered wisdom teacher of their movement had once articulated, e.g., "love your enemy," "forgive infinitely," "turn the other cheek" -- passive resistance, in other words.

They may have found that their experience with the storm at sea made a good metaphor for cheering on those whom they were trying to add to their ideological community.

This they might they have said something like this to potential recruits:

"We won't lie: We'll always be in the minority, and what we teach and try to exemplify will challenge society and cause us trouble just as it caused our founder trouble, even unto death.

"But we sense that he is with us still in the profound wisdom of his teaching. We are persuaded that his teaching practiced by enough people can save the human race from itself. It is that conviction that sustains us through trouble. It is that which brings the calming effect we need to help us keep on keeping on."

We can only imagine that Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela were sustained by the same calm.
 


 


� Copyright 2012, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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